WhatsApp’s 25 secrets you probably didn’t know of – Part 1

LAST week we examined WhatsApp’s history and how its use has exploded worldwide. There are now over a billion WhatsApp users worldwide.

The bad news? Your mum has already found her latest favourite way to spam you. The good news? You can easily avoid her with our many secret tips and tricks that you probably don’t know about.

From disabling its ‘last seen’ feature to bookmarking messages you don’t want to forget about, there are loads of tricks to make your favourite IM app more useful than ever. You just have to be in the know.

We’ve scoured every inch of WhatsApp to gather up its most useful features. Read these top tips and you’ll be a pro in no time at all.

1) Begone, blue ticks of misery

Sometimes you’ve not got time to respond immediately. But at the same time, you don’t want the sender to realise that you’ve already looked at the message, lest they think you’re ignoring them when you fail to reply for two more hours. That’s the privilege the blue ticks take away.

Recently though, the chat app has realised the error of its ways and silently come up with a workaround. The liberty of late replying is ours again.

How: In the Settings menu, go to Account, then Privacy and turn off Read Receipts. The only snag is it works both ways and you’ll no longer get read receipts from other people either.

2) Figure out your bffs

In 2017, friendships aren’t measured by loyalty or time, it’s all about how much data you’ve shared. WhatsApp has that info – and you can use it to make your own ranked list of your favourite friends.

No, there’s nothing weird about that at all. What’s more, if you click through you can mass delete stuff that’s taking up too much space.

How: Head to Settings > Data and Storage Usage > Storage Usage and you’ll see a list of your most important groups and contacts ranked according to the data you’ve expended on them. Ah, the romance of modern living.

3) See when your messages are read

In group chats, those grey ticks only turn blue when every member of the group has read your message. But there lurks within WhatsApp a handy way to find out who’s neglecting you…

How: Hold down on a message you’ve sent (or swipe left on iOS) and select Info. It’ll show you who it’s been delivered to and who’s read it. This also works with individual chats.

4) Hide your profile pic

How: Head to Settings > Privacy > Profile Photo > Nobody.

5) Mute group chats

With WhatsApp groups only capped at 50 participants, they can sometimes get pretty busy. Prevent yourself from being woken up by incessant messages by muting particular groups.

How: Tap on the group chat of your choice, then the name to bring up Group Info where you will find the option to Mute the chat for either eight hours, one week or a year.

Although if you’re choosing the last option, you might as well leave altogether.

6) Get shortcuts to conversations

If you’re on Android you can create shortcuts to popular chats and let them live on your home screen: useful if there are certain people you chat to more often.

How: Tap and hold on the chat (group or individual) of your choice and a tab will pop up. Select the Add Conversation Shortcut option and the chat in question will appear as the person’s profile photo on your mobile desktop.

7) Find out the truth about where your husband is

If you’re particularly paranoid, when someone shares their location with you, you can tell whether it’s the real deal or they’ve just picked somewhere from the map by how it appears in the chat window.

How: The way the location appears is a clue. If they’ve sent you their genuine GPS location it appears as a dropped pin, if it’s been entered manually the full address will appear with it. Game’s up, you adulterers.

8) Go incognito

You can’t get away with not replying to messages if people can see when you were last online, so turn off WhatsApp’s ‘last seen’ feature to go incognito. Now you can ignore people at your leisure.

How: It’s in the Privacy menu, under Last Seen, and if you want you can hide from everybody, or only allow your contacts to see your activity.